ABSTRACT
A new author was thus introduced to the public, a man who afterwards became the most erudite Arabic lexicographer in the history of oriental scholarship. His first book has been described as ‘the most perfect picture of a people’s life that has ever been written.’ The first edition was sold out in a fortnight; 6,500 copies of the second edition were disposed of in short time; the work has long since taken its place among the classics of travel literature, and still figures prominently in learned bibliographies of Egyptian sociology.
